Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing the poltergeist phenomena in Shades’ house, Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions the moskovett, a cold wind that blows on Zemblan eastern shores throughout March:

When Charles the Beloved (the last self-exiled King of Zembla) visits his wife, Queen Disa, at her Mediterranean villa, he brings her a bouquet of flowers-of-the-gods:

In VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) quotes a Zemblan saying in which a beautiful woman is compared to a compass rose:

In his apology of suicide Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions a cell in the luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959:

A son of Colonel Peter Gusev (King Alfin’s ‘aerial adjutant’), Oleg Gusev (Prince Charles’ beloved playmate) is Duke of Rahl:

According to Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), young Prince Charles and his playmate Oleg were handsome, long-legged specimens of Varangian boyhood:

Aсcording to M'sieur Pierre, the executioner in VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935), he is vyshnegradets (an Elderburian):

In his essay The Art of Literature and Commonsense (1941) VN says that the Russian language supplies definitions for two types or stages of inspiration, vostorg and vdokhnovenie:

According to Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), Samuel Shade (the poet’s father) had studied medicine in his youth and was vice-president of a firm of surgical instruments in Exton:

According to Professor Hurley, the chief passion of Samuel Shade (the poet’s father in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) was the study of the feathered tribe: